The Long Haul

About the Author

Two years ago tomorrow, the world changed when terrorists took
their war to American soil and murdered 3,000 civilians within the
span just a few hours. It was not just our view of this country and
of the world around us that changed; so did the course of American
foreign policy. Intervention in foreign countries, nation building,
peacekeeping, these were concepts for which President Bush had had
little use before that fateful day.

The war against terrorism changed all that, forcing the Bush
administration in its first year to confront challenges and
responsibilities that had certainly not been part of the original
agenda. How far nation-building in some form has is now a part of
the Bush foreign policy was made clear Sunday night when the
president made a welcome attempt at giving the American people a
status report on the American military effort in Iraq.

"This will take time, and require sacrifice," Mr. Bush said.
"Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary,
to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror."

The speech deserves a mixed review. Mr. Bush did what he does
best, taking his case directly to the American people, around the
noise of national media and pundits. It answered some questions,
but left others still hanging uncomfortably in the air. And exactly
why the White House chose a Sunday night with little advance notice
to put an address this important on the air is a mystery.

Americans still very much trust their president in foreign
affairs. While the most cited recent poll showed Mr. Bush's job
approval rating at 52 percent, the lowest in two years, a new poll
conducted for the German Marshall Fund showed that 60 percent of
Americans approve of the way Mr. Bush is handling international
policy. Mr. Bush should take courage from that fact.

As might be expected, Democratic presidential candidates went on
the attack immediately. They are vying for media attention and have
found a safer target in Mr. Bush than in each other. "It is nothing
short of outrageous hat the president spent 15 minutes trying to
make up for 15 months of mismanagement," former Vermont Governor
Howard Dean said. Amazingly, Mr. Dean also suggested that the
nation would be safer if the funding requested by Mr. Bush for the
war were used on improving American class rooms.

The president was right to level with the nation about the money
realistically needed for reconstructing Iraq and Afghanistan -- at
least in 2004. Critics of the president immediately jumped to
denounce the lack of specificity in his remarks as to how the money
would be spent. Sunday night was not the time or place for a
laundry list of specifics, but the demand for accountability is
indeed a reasonable one. The president plans to ask Congress for
$66 billion to cover military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and $21 billion will be dedicated to civilian reconstruction,
hardly the Marshall Plan, but still a lot of money.

As for the president's three goals in Iraq, they move in the
right direction, with one deviation.

1) Defeat the terrorists in Iraq.

2) Pull in other nations to help with a multinational force to be
led by the United States, possibly under U.N. auspices.

3) Turn over political power to the Iraqis themselves and train
their military, border security forces, police.

Many of us have strong reservations about the
usefulness of the United Nations. If, however, Secretary of State
Colin Powell thinks he can negotiate a Security Council resolution
that will allow other countries to assist in the reconstruction
under American leadership, that could bring us closer to goal
number three. Unfortunately, one would have to say that the chances
of this happening are not great, judging by Mr. Powell's rate of
success at the United Nations so far.

While the president was taking stock, it would have
been appropriate for him to acknowledge the shortcomings in the
pre-war planing stages for the reconstruction. The president should
also have presented some accounting on the subject of weapons of
mass destruction, which he barely mentioned.

Most importantly in this week of September 11, though,
the president reminded us that we are fighting terrorists in Iraq
so that we won't have to fight them on the streets of America. But
this fight is not just about us. It is also about doing right by
the Iraqi people, who are also getting killed. As soon as
considerations of security and stability allow, we should be
turning the running of their country back to them.